


Not Now

by querxes



Category: Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Antisemitism, Badass Sarah Jacobs (Newsies), Canon Era, Gen, Immigration & Emigration, Judaism, Period-Typical Sexism, The American Dream does not exist and never has, Xenophobia, newsies girls week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:47:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24912589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/querxes/pseuds/querxes
Summary: Sarah Jacobs will not fall apart.
Relationships: David Jacobs & Sarah Jacobs, Sarah Jacobs & The Jacobs Family
Comments: 12
Kudos: 22





	Not Now

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone! Here is my contribution for Newsies Girls Week. I really love Sarah and I had this in the works long before I even heard about the week, but I decided to save it for now. I wanted to capture her voice well, and I hope I achieved that.

Sarah Jacobs will not fall apart.

In her early childhood, her arms were held stretched wide open. Sometimes they closed into an embrace (most of the time it was hesitant, except for when it came to her family), sometimes they were pulled harder and harder against each other that she thought her chest would split in two. Once she realized that people were doing it to hurt her, she brought her arms in and held them defensively in front of her face.

Sarah was eleven years old when she fully realized that she could do nothing about what the other kids would say, what they would do. Sarah was also eleven years old when she learned how to push down kids in the playground for spitting in her brother’s hair and stealing his kippah and for stealing her Polish-to-English dictionary and for laughing at them when they prayed before eating their stale pieces of bread for lunch. She also learned that it didn’t matter how much the other kid deserved it or if she did it in an act of self-defense; the American kid would never be punished as harshly as she was.

Sarah grew up with welts on her once-delicate hands from teachers striking rulers as hard as they could; simply because they _could._ More often than not, she faced the ruler by sticking up for herself and for David and for the other kids like them in their classes. David only ever really got the ruler because he didn’t understand why he couldn’t use his left hand (it was easier, so why was it so bad?) and the other kids got it when they forgot words in English. (Sarah and David didn’t talk enough in class to get called out for it.)

Sarah was sixteen when she was forced to drop out of school and stay home with her mother to help her sew dresses and scrub away at laundry for the rich women who pitied them. In the back of her mind, Sarah could almost see the beautiful clothes her mother used to design and create out of the most delicate silk and pure cotton when they owned the family boutique and when they all had very different names. (Sarah was Sara and David was Dawid and Les was Lesław and Esther was Estera and Mayer was Meir and they were the Jakub family; Castle Garden decided they’d be better off pretending to be the all-American Jacobs family in America, with their heavy Polish accents and un-American features.)

Sarah didn’t want to drop out of school, not at all, and her mother told her if things were different she wouldn’t have to, but for now she had an obligation to her family and someday David will fill that obligation and provide for the family and later her husband would provide but for now she has do be the one to suffer and provide by missing out on one of the reasons why they came to America in the first place. If things were different. _We’re women, Sarah. We always have to make the hard decisions._

(Sarah would be provided for; she already had been by her father and soon it’ll be David, who will have a good—but not too good—job and then someday it’ll be her husband, a proud—but not too proud—Jewish man with a perfect job and when they grow old and her husband dies it’ll be her son that provides, hopefully rich—but not too rich—on the promises of the American soil; but for the next two years it’ll be her providing by scrubbing down barely-worn clothing and picking up extra work from the old lady on the lower floor whose hands are too shaky to sew anymore and the young man who never learned how to.)

The bruises and welts on her knuckles and hands faded and were replaced with pruned fingertips and cuts (where she accidentally jabbed herself with the needles; her hands were never as steady as her mother’s). She stayed up late at night reading David’s school books, knowing it would never be the same as going to school but it would have to suffice, because she would never finish school despite her sky-high dreams. She gravitated toward the astronomy books the most, and her and David would spend hours throwing facts and opinions at each other on the constellations and the nature of gravity and the moon. Mostly facts, because science does not have room for lofty, literary opinions. That’s probably why she preferred the sciences, just because everything was the cold, hard-proven truth, and if it wasn’t, that was because more needed to be discovered and explored.

Maybe, just maybe, if Sarah could’ve gotten to finish school and go to college (who was she kidding, even David wouldn’t be going to college), she would’ve studied astronomy. She would be able to spend her days studying the night sky and discovering big things, things that no man could be able to see with the naked eye, and she would be damn good at it. She could discover and create things beyond comprehension. (Maybe, just maybe, she would have enough money to provide for her husband so he could stay at home and take care of the kids, if society didn’t see that as wrong in the first place. No woman would be the breadwinner if their husband’s paycheck didn’t decide they had to be.)

Sarah Jacobs can’t afford to fall apart.

When Sarah was seventeen, her father had his accident, taking him out of his job at the factory. (Long gone was the businessman who ran the boutique and its finances so his wife could focus on designing and creating the most revolutionary dresses worn throughout all of Poland and even beyond.) He was in so much blinding pain that he could hardly even sit up in bed for an entire week. No doctors came to visit, they couldn’t afford it. Instead, Esther had to use her limited medical knowledge to try and fix her husband’s mangled-up leg (and Sarah ignored the sound of her mother dry-heaving after the fact when she thought she was alone) and she tore up threadbare, extremely old dresses in order to cover the wound. Sarah stood at her mother’s side, just waiting for something to go wrong that required her to jump in.

She also listened to her mother pray under her breath at night when she thought everyone was sleeping. _Oh God, please let David go back to school soon so he can still provide for us in a year, so Les can someday be the first Jacobs to attend college in America. If only You could’ve made this happen a year later, if David had that promising job with his American diploma, we wouldn’t have to send out both of our sons to lie and cheat their way into earning money. Damn that delivery truck for not waiting a single year to ruin our lives._ Sarah made eye contact with David from across the floor on their respective mattresses. His eyes were wide open, and he pulled Les into his side tighter. Sarah simply stared in disbelief.

That was the first time Esther Jacobs ever, _ever,_ cursed at God. That was also the moment Sarah knew they all should be worried. Really worried. Estera Jakub had seen the windows in her boutique smashed and her dresses torn and burnt on the street in front of them, and never once had she cursed God. Not even when they fled for America in the middle of the night when the pogrom became even worse in their village, in their country. Never had that woman ever had a bad thing to say about their God. 

Esther was a woman of her faith. She was the reason why David clung to religion in desperation and Sarah pushed away from it in fear. They both remember watching her step through the broken glass in their sitting room and leading them out of the country with the faith that God would protect them. David saw how her belief made them strong enough to survive, while Sarah could only remember the shards on the carpet and the bile in her throat and the crowded ship filled with sickness and devastation. She saw how her mother refused to give up. So she knew they would all be dead before Esther would curse God a second time.

Something shifted that night, in both of their eyes. They stared in silence at the cracked ceiling as they listened to the sounds of their family sleeping all around them, but neither of them slept at all. Everything was so wrong.

But Sarah Jacobs will not fall apart, not now.

Not while her brothers had to run around on the streets of New York to make ends meet, Les with all the childhood innocence in the world and David with none of it. (There was no time to be a kid when you had to put food on the table, when you were worried about a million and one things so your little brother didn’t have to.) Then, they weren’t making money. That was so much worse. But she had to be a big sister now, because that was what she was. It was being harsh and supportive at the same time, finding a rocky balance of the two.

She could only compare her feelings to being held underwater, kicking and screaming and thrashing to break free. She had a finger clamped to the dock, but she couldn’t pull herself out.

Sarah had only gone swimming once in her lifetime, when she was eight years old and still knew how to have fun for the sake of having fun. She loved it while David hated it. (It wasn’t fun to swim alone, so she stopped when David choked on a mouthful of water and got it in his already-sensitive ears. She had remembered what he compared it to once she pulled him out. It was like panic snapping in your chest and pushing you down. She laughed and called him dramatic, but now she understood what he meant. This was what it felt like.

But Sarah Jacobs will not fall apart.

This was no Promised Land, the Jacobses were not living the American Dream. This was grasping at the hope that their family could stay together, alive despite not being able to thrive. _We’re women, Sarah. We always have to make the hard decisions._ America would not provide for her family all by itself, so Sarah would steady her hands and set to work. Sometimes, you need to make your own luck.

Now, Sarah would be the one to provide for her family. _We’re women, Sarah_. _We always have to make the hard decisions._

So she kept her hands poised in front of her, wiped the sweat from her forehead, and she pulled out the pieces of fabric.

Sarah Jacobs will not fall apart.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!  
> Let me know what you think!  
> Come yell at me on tumblr @thetruthabouttheboy or my main @querxes


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